In a telecommunication chassis with multiple ports, it is useful to use a modular communication chassis design with a plurality of line cards, each with a plurality of communication ports to allow for various densities of ports in the said chassis to address multiple applications and deployment scenarios. Using Ethernet as the backplane for the said modular communication chassis is useful, particularly when the data to be exchanged between one or more main boards and a plurality of communication line cards involve Ethernet frames.
The Ethernet preamble is a 64-bit field that contains a synchronization pattern consisting of alternating ones and zeros and ending with two consecutive ones. After synchronization is established, the preamble is used to locate the first bit of the packet.
The embodiment allows a modular system using an Ethernet backplane, for communication between a main board and a plurality of line cards, to redefine an IEEE 802.3 Ethernet preamble to share information and actions about Ethernet frames to be passed between different communication line cards. The shared information and actions are inserted in-line for each Ethernet frame to process to reduce the system overhead and streamline the operation between a plurality of communication line cards.